07.11.2023 Jia Hui Lee | University of Bayreuth

In English, the phrase ‘to make sense’ has several meanings. When something makes sense, it is considered intelligible or comprehensible; it can also refer to something that is wise or reasonable, “the right tools for the job” (Clarke and Fujimura 1992). These definitions, however, assume implicit understandings of what is intelligible, comprehensible, or wise. In situations where humans and other animals work together, sensing practices are seldom taken for granted and have to be actively trained, or shaped through deliberate, sustained relationships. This talk describes species transgressing sensory labors and thinking among people and rats who work together to detect landmines and tuberculosis in humanitarian projects based in Tanzania. I present work in progress from my proposed book manuscript, featuring an analysis of how humans and rodents work together to produce a ‘common sense’ (Latour 2014) embedded within a politics of scientific knowledge production in Africa. I focus on the ‘making’ part of ‘making sense’, reflecting on the failures and potentials of doing ethnography in interspecies, sensory contexts. Some of the questions I hope to discuss with fellow researchers and students are: How might anthropologists confront the multiple ways through which people entangle with nonhuman interfaces to “make sense” of the world? How might an attention to the senses help identify new methods or areas of research in anthropology or science and technology studies? How might anthropologists pay attention to the gendered, racial, and/or class dimensions of sense making practices?